Château Trotanoy 2018 Vintage En Primeur

CHÂTEAU TROTANOY 2018 VINTAGE EN PRIMEUR EXCLUSIVE TO CORNEY & BARROW IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

“A wine that will doubtless pass into legend.”

ADAM BRETT-SMITH

THE HISTORY Jean-Pierre Moueix acquired Château Trotanoy in 1953.

This purchase proved a turning point in the waning profile of one of the great old Pomerol estates. At its height in the nineteenth century, Trotanoy was ranked second in Pomerol (ahead of Petrus) by the reference publication Cocks and Féret*.

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Various plots were sold off over the years, one parcel forming the core of what is now Château Latour à Pomerol. By 1908, the holdings had been reduced by around a third.

Jean-Pierre Moueix’s son Christian and grandson Édouard Moueix now run the estate. The care lavished on Trotanoy by the Moueix family has enabled it to regain its position among the top handful of Bordeaux properties, on either bank. *

Édouard Moueix

Bordeaux et Ses Vins, Cocks et Féret, 1868

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Credit Benjamin Duvignac

THE VINEYARD The crunch of white pebbles underfoot, the intense reflected light in summer...

What makes Trotanoy different is immediately obvious when you walk between its vines. The stones act as a store of heat, helping protect against frost.

Beneath the pebbles is clay, which means the soils tend to bake solid in dry weather, in Édouard Moueix’s words, into “an almost concrete-like hardness”. When wet, they become treacherously slippery. It is not a coincidence that ‘Trotanoy’ suggests ‘Trop ennuie’ – ‘too much’, ‘too difficult’...

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The 7.2 hectares of vines here are planted partly on the plateau, partly on a west-facing slope. There is more gravel at the top of the slope and progressively more clay as you descend. The subsoil contains more gravel, sand and then a rock-hard layer of iron-rich soil, Pomerol’s famous crasse de fer.

The map to the right was drawn by Kelley Moueix, Édouard’s wife.* As it shows, the vineyard is comprised of six parcels. La Marinette lies to the south-east of the château, towards Le Pin. The driveway with its cypress sentinels is flanked by Entrée Gauche and Entrée Droite.

Along with La Marinette, these are the nerve-centre of the estate, planted predominantly with Merlot and benefitting from some of the deepest gravel soils in Pomerol, particularly Entrée Gauche. To the west of the château lie Le Hangar and Les Argiles, the latter, as the name suggests, the estate’s most clay-heavy parcel. The final plot is La Piscine, behind the château, in the direction of Latour à Pomerol.

The last significant re-planting was a parcel of Merlot in 2002. Old vines prevail, the average age being 37 years.

The plantings are 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc.

On average, only 20,000 bottles are produced per year.

Reproduced here with kind permission of Neal Martin, Wine Journal Publishing and Kelley Moueix. *

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Map credit: Kelley Moueix

VINEYARD HOLDINGS 2018 VINTAGE Size (hectares)

Plantings

Average Vine Age (yrs)

Soil

Average Production (doz)

7.2

90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc

37

Gravel on clay and black clay on iron pan

1,670 dozen bottle cases

Credit Benjamin Duvignac

THE CELLAR Let it be.

The hands-off winemaking at Trotanoy follows the approach of the great Jean-Claude Berrouet, who over five decades, made some of the most legendary Pomerols, including at Trotanoy and Petrus.

Jean-Claude’s last complete vintage at Trotanoy was 2006, when he was succeeded as technical director for Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix by Éric Murisasco, the current incumbent. Éric had worked as cellar master alongside Jean-Claude since 1993, meaning continuity was and is assured.

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The grapes are sorted and fully de-stemmed. The one concession to modernity is optical grape sorting, which has been used at all the Moueix properties since 2009.

Following fermentation and maceration for around three weeks in temperature-controlled concrete vats, at a relatively low 26°C, the wines age for 20 months in French oak barrels, 40-50% of which are new. They are fined with egg whites, with no filtration.

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2018 VINTAGE REPORT “Août fait le moût.”

ANON

They say that “août fait le moût” – the month of August determines the quality of the grape must (and so of the vintage). Trotanoy 2018’s ripeness and suppleness of tannin, its boldness of structure can be traced, it is tempting to imagine, directly to the nurturing warmth and sunlight of August 2018.

June to September 2018 saw a 50-year record number of sunshine hours. 1,136 hours to be precise, which my backof-envelope arithmetic makes over 10 hours a day. This prolonged sunshine came after a miserably moist spring, which caused severe outbreaks of mildew, which were mitigated by heroic vineyard work.

2018 is a vintage for the long term. Its tannins are ample but beautifully supple and there is an uplifting freshness.

Christian Moueix, who is not given to hyperbole, says 2018 will rank among the best vintages he has made.

Praise indeed.

The one saving grace of the cool, rainy winter and spring was that bud-break came late, in the second week of April, allowing Trotanoy to avoid a spring frost. A successful flowering period at the end of May heralded a potentially large crop. Volume expectations were then lowered by the onset of downy mildew, a fungus-like

growth on grapes and leaves which damages them and blocks photosynthesis.

Having successfully battled the mildew, as rain gave way to sunshine, the vineyard team turned its attention to cropthinning, fine-tuning the vines’ productivity levels to their specific ages and terroirs.

The split personality of the season can be seen from the rainfall figures. April to June saw 183mm of rainfall. In Édouard Moueix’s words, “not more rain than usual, but constant rain.” By contrast, from July to September, there was just 104mm.

Harvest began on 19th September at Trotanoy, some five days after the Moueix family’s earliest Pomerol properties, finishing on 3rd October. Picking was carried out only in the mornings in order to avoid the afternoon heat. It was, according to Édouard, “a very easy harvest, ‘Californian’ in the sense that we had the luxury of being able to wait for ripeness.”

The yield in 2018 was 38 hectolitres per hectare (hl/ha).

Trotanoy is 100% Merlot this year, with 70% of the crop making it into the grand vin.

GUY SEDDON July 2019

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THE ALLOCATION PROCESS The nature of En Primeur means stocks are limited. We use our exclusive relationships to secure as much as possible. You can always order with confidence from Corney & Barrow.

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• The focus of Château Trotanoy and Corney & Barrow is on the private customer and as a consumer rather than a speculator.

• This wine is bought on the clear understanding that it will be stored and delivered in the UK only.

• Should you wish to sell the wine in the future, do please offer Corney & Barrow first refusal as this will ensure the integrity of secondary market distribution, something which is of great concern to Château Trotanoy and Ets. Jean-Pierre Moueix.

As detailed above, all orders are conditional upon UK storage only.

Do please speak to our sales team, who will be delighted to help you further.

May we please have your order by 25th July 2019.

Allocations will be completed by 30th July 2019.

Confirmation of order will be through receipt of invoice and the wine will be put into your reserve on payment.

• Priority will be given to Château Trotanoy’s and Corney & Barrow’s best, most loyal and most regular customers.

Credit Benjamin Duvignac

TASTING NOTE

By Adam Brett-Smith

CHÂTEAU TROTANOY, POMEROL

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2018 does not impose itself on Trotanoy, rather does this great vineyard embrace all the very finest qualities of a growing season that was made in heaven (along with some 16,800 hours of meticulous vineyard husbandry by the Moueix team). It is as if the wet winter and spring, so vital for the water table, so beautifully metered by Trotanoy’s dense soil during the hot, dry and sunny summer, conspired to produce a wine that will doubtless pass into legend.

Huge ruby colour. The nose is massive, latent, cloaked in darkest, profoundly rich, red fruit perfume. ‘Wine from another era’ in the very best sense. Extraordinary. The palate is deceptive, silken, supple, coated with fruit but with profound extract underneath with a dry, dense power that builds seemingly endlessly. This wine and its mass are not so much fresh as lifted so that the weight is borne in perfect balance. This is a majestic Trotanoy, pretty much incomparable in stature to any other great wine I tasted in this vintage.

Corney & Barrow Score 18 - 19 Recommended drinking from 2028 - 2035+ £1,350/Case of 6 bottles, in bond UK £1,360/Case of 3 magnums, in bond UK £950/Case of 1 double magnum, in bond UK

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Tasting Guide Our tasting notes provide full details but, at your request, we have also introduced a clear and simple marking system. We hope these guidelines assist you in your selection. For the benefit of simplicity, wines are scored out of 20. We will often use a range of scores (e.g. 16.5 to 17) to indicate the potential to achieve a higher mark. When a ‘+’ is shown it adds further to that potential. Wines from lesser vintages will, inevitably, show a lower overall score.

Wines are judged, in a very broad sense, against their peers. Why? Well, you cannot easily compare a Ford with an Aston Martin, other than they are both cars and have wheels. It is not that different with wine. A score is a summary only. The devil is in the detail, so please focus on the tasting notes and, as always, speak to our sales team.

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“2018 is a vintage for the long term. Its tannins are ample but beautifully supple and there is an uplifting freshness.�

GUY SEDDON

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